"The blues as abstract." - Soundcloud description, in its entirety, for Bill Orcutt's "O Platitudes!," a seven-and-a-half minute track from an upcoming Vin Du Select Qualitite release. Probably the most appropriate (and economical) phrase to describe Orcutt's music, even if, with this new piece and last year's masterful A History of Every One, his music has moved ever-so-slightly closer to just "the blues." Though "O Platitudes!" is expansive, befuddling, jarring, and rife with Orcutt-ian flurries of disjunct notes, there are intact blues riffs, and it's duly lyrical-- beautiful, even-- throughout. Where A History of Every One mirrored the writing of the author to whom it paid homage (Gertrude Stein) with its esoteric musical idioms, "O Platitudes!" echoes, in its inviting-ness as well as its title (perhaps), the work of two later American writers: Willa Cather and Flannery O'Connor.